Photo by Robert Maner – A CARTA bus stops at Camp Jordan Arena in East Ridge on Friday. A public forum will be held this Thursday to discuss future bus service in East Ridge

At a City Council meeting back in February, I remember the subject of continuing CARTA bus service to East Ridge coming up for discussion.  I had no idea that East Ridge had bus service and neither did some of the folks sitting around me.  Sure enough, I Googled it from my phone while still at the meeting and saw that there is indeed a bus route and it’s called the 3E/ER Enterprise South / Eastgate & East Ridge.

This route runs Monday thru Friday with two runs through East Ridge early in the mornings and two runs at early evening.  In East Ridge there are some stops along Ringgold Road from Moore Road to I-75, but the main pickup and drop off location being right in front of Camp Jordan Arena.  This route is primarily concentrated on moving people from Brainerd and East Ridge to VW and Amazon and a round trip from Camp Jordan back to Camp Jordan is just a little over an hour.

So, yesterday afternoon on what turned out to be a beautiful early spring Friday afternoon, my wife and I set out to drive from Mission Oaks to Camp Jordan to get a first-hand look at CARTA’s bus service.  A small bus stop sign is the only thing that that indicates that such a thing as bus service exists.  Right on time at 5:15pm the 3E/ER rolls into Camp Jordan and stops right in front of the arena as advertised.  We get on the bus, fumble around for exact change, and pay our $1.50 fare after a kind young man freely offered to give me change for my $5 bill.  The bus is very clean and the driver is friendly and professional.  The other riders are polite and appear to be off to work at Enterprise South.  Our round-trip ride was very comfortable and took us through some familiar areas to include the entire Enterprise South area, Lee Highway, Eastgate, and Ringgold Road.

Here are the numbers (my wife and I not included) for the 3E/ER Route on Friday, March 24 at 5:15 PM:

• Depart Camp Jordan:  5 riders already on the bus when it arrives at Camp Jordan, 1 rider gets on = 6 riders
• Hickory Valley Road:  6 riders still, no one gets off = 6 riders
• Amazon:  5 riders get off to include the one rider from Camp Jordan, 1 rider gets on = 2 riders
• VW:  1 rider gets off  = 1 rider
• Lee Hwy Airport Road:  1 rider gets off = 0 riders.
• Arrive Camp Jordan:  0 riders arrive, 0 riders get on = 0 riders

This is just a snapshot of ridership on one day during one route, but I think it paints a picture of what I fully expected prior to making this trip.  The scenario described above indicates that the 3E/ER route carried one rider from Camp Jordan to Amazon.  There may have been a rider or two originating on Ringgold Road on the bus already when it arrived at Camp Jordan before I got on, so let’s assume that maybe five East Ridge riders made this trip.  Multiply that by four routes per day and at 20 riders per day originating from East Ridge I think you see the picture.

CARTA should be able to confirm some numbers and I encourage citizens and City leaders to dig into the data.

My question is whether it’s worth it to East Ridge to subsidize such minimal ridership for East Ridge residents to a tune of $400k to $500k per year?  Would East Ridge be subsidizing a route that is used more by Brainerd residents than its own citizens?  Would we be in some way subsidizing billion dollar corporations by providing transportation for their employees to tax subsidized facilities?  Does this route help a few people in East Ridge?  Probably so, but can we really expect the taxpayers of this small city to spend this much on an underutilized route?

Are there other alternatives to include a ride share lot, shuttle bus for employees funded by both VW and Amazon, or should we simply let the funding expire along with this route?  Free taxi service for 20 people per day would be much cheaper than this bus route.  When you start looking at the numbers, for an average daily ridership of 20 people at about $500,000 a year you could buy those same 20 people a new car every year.

I encourage City leaders and interested citizens to spend the $1.50 fare to see for yourself what this is all about prior to the public meeting next week.  The question at hand regardless of whether or not the route could be made more accessible and useable to East Ridge residents, but who is going to pay for it?  Apparently, CARTA doesn’t think it’s worth it.  The grant funding for the route that was intended to get the bus service up and running for a short time to see if it could be self-sustaining – apparently not, and now CARTA has its hands open to see if East Ridge will pony up. 

Robert Maner

Mission Oaks Community

East Ridge, TN